Of course, I'm not talking about the four-leaf kind, though that type's pretty rare, too. No, I mean the Clover coffee maker, a high-tech gadget that dropped jaws all over bean circles a few years ago, with its deeply sophisticated, digital one-cup-at-a-time brewing (not to mention the $11K price tag).
At first, the machines were the pride of the serious coffee lover, with independent cafés snapping them up as a way of showcasing artisanal coffees one by one, instead of losing them to the murky depths of an insulated thermos. But when Starbucks bought the Clover technology last year, the funky-looking little metal boxes were suddenly less and less available to your average café owner, becoming proprietary to the green mermaid.
So why is this lucky? Because it started a revolution. Or, more accurately, a renaissance. Read more about getting lucky with cup-at-a-time coffee after the jump.
Sometimes it seems like owning a coffee shop is on everybody's bucket list: Travel around the world, write the great American novel, retire and open a top-notch café. Last year, Alex Clark, 26, and Aaron Hagedorn, 33, checked that last one off, abandoning their steady (if somewhat boring) financial-sector 9-to-5s in midtown Manhattan for predawn mornings and late, overcaffeinated nights helming Ost Café in Gotham's Alphabet City neighborhood.
The friends traded in their office desks for Ost's beautiful corner location in an ever up-and-coming part of town -- complete with floor-to-ceiling windows and plenty of sunlight -- in order to live the proverbial dream as small-business owners... but do they think it was worth it? Leave it to the CoffeeMeister to find out.
Everybody thinks their neighborhood barista is the best. The difference is that New York-based espresso doyenne Amber Sather really is one of the best, as her Barista Championship titles attest (Sather's taken home first place in two Northeast regional barista competitions and third in the national event, among others).
Though many folks don't know they exist, barista championships are no joke to coffee professionals: You must prepare four espressos, cappuccinos and signature drinks of your own design to a panel of judges under extreme pressure.
The sassy Montana native moved to New York City a year ago, leaving a barista-trainer position with Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea in Chicago for a spot on the team at Brooklyn favorite Café Grumpy, where she trains baristas and passes cup after caffeinated cup to sleepy locals.
After the jump, Sather chats with the CoffeeMeister about barista competitions, her idea of the perfect café and more.
Like Brooklynites arguing over the perfect egg cream, baristas do sometimes spar about the perfect cappuccino: What's the precise coffee-to-milk ratio? Should it be "bone dry" with stiff foam that peaks like fresh meringue? How is it different from a latte? What makes it so special, anyway?
Like many other things about coffee, the cappuccino even has a charming (and much debated) origin story that adds to its mystique: It's said the drink was named for the monks of Capuchin, whose thick hooded cowls are reminiscent of the creamy caffeinated treat. Maybe that's why some people treat a great cappuccino as a religious experience?
More about the proverbial "perfect cappuccino" after the jump.
It can seem like the only thing harder than navigating the labyrinthine menu at a coffee shop is findingone that's worth the hassle. Decoding the signals of a great café isn't always as hard as it may seem: click through for five easy things to look for when trying to determine if unfamiliar territory is the caffeinated friend or foe.
Five signs of a great café -- from silent lattes to barista interrogation -- after the jump.
A sip of this deliciously creamy and smooth cup of coffee is sure to please even those non-coffee drinkers. Similar to the French cafe au lait and the Italian cappuccino, the Viennese melange is a combination of coffee with steamed milk and foam. Unlike cappuccino, this "Wiener Melange" is made with milder coffee and is traditionally served with a glass of water. The accompaniment of water allows the coffee to go down more easily without dehydration.
The experience of sitting in a plush Viennese café with a cup of Viennese coffee, a glass of water and a newspaper seems to awaken the intellect within you. It conjures up images of the Austrian intelligentsia in the early 20th century with characters like Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt.
While in Vienna, I visited several Viennese cafés, such as the famous Café Central, and tried several variations on this deep rich coffee. My favorite, Franziskaner, also called an "espresso con panna," is served with whipped cream instead of foam. I also tasted rich delicious café mocha served with whipped cream. The Viennese café culture dates as far back as the late 17th century.
The influence of the melange on American coffee can be seen in Starbucks and several smaller coffeeshops. One of the best places to try the classic melange is Café Sabarsky located on the first floor of the Neue Galerie in Manhattan.
In my ever-increasing attempts to save money, I recently decided to cut back on my coffee expenditures. While I get most of my coffee from my local corner store, where it only costs $1.20 a cup, even that price starts to add up, particularly when I am hard-pressed to come up with something to write about and the caffeine monster beckons.
Choosing coffee isn't such an easy thing. I've tried quite a few brands, generally with mixed success. My wife swears by Illy, an Italian coffee that, I must admit, is damn near perfect. Still, at $12 per can, it's pricey and, given that I am a cream-and-sugar guy, its transcendent wonder is somewhat wasted on me.
I recently retried Café Du Monde, a New Orleans chicory-enhanced coffee that I used to love in college. I don't know if my tastes have changed, or if the coffee has gone downhill, but the last can I bought tasted like incinerated cat turds. Seriously, I don't want to be mean, but it was positively unholy. Bru, on the other hand, is a chicory blend with a solid taste and a good price point; unfortunately, it is sometimes hard to come by. If I'm going to get addicted to a brand, I need a consistent supply!
God knows, I resisted. The bizarre news that Starbucks will soon be releasing "VIA Ready Brew," an instant coffee line has been in the news for a few days now, but I've fought the temptation to attack the coffee retailer. After all, while I'm not a fan of Starbucks, there isn't really any joy in watching a company that built its reputation on the cafe experience sell out its customers for a quick buck. Mediocrity is depressing, even when it is undertaken by a huge, menacing corporation.
It's not like this hasn't been in the cards for a while. After all, the Starbucks marketing leviathan has long since squeezed out numerous independent retailers with its insane market saturation. Along the way, they have sold pretty much everything related to the coffee experience, from mugs to t-shirts, truffles to beans. In the past few years, the name "Starbucks" has become to coffee what McDonald's is to hamburgers, Kleenex is to tissues, and Roto Rooter is to septic systems: it is almost a generic term for a completely commodified service.
Still, I managed to resist the urge to attack Starbucks as they take this final step on the road to self-parody. However, when the company's CEO, Howard Schultz, tried to justify the decision in an editorial on the Huffington Post, I couldn't hold back any longer. Anyone who enjoys watching a corporate tool use self-important business-speak to justify an untenable decision should definitely give it a peek. Schultz begins with a brief analysis of the huge instant coffee market, followed by an explanation of how the chain's core audience will love the new product line. For a final flourish, Schultz ends with a strangely out-of-touch analysis of the company's patrons.
Have you ever gone into Starbucks in the morning and found yourself wishing that the ubiquitous coffee seller offered a combo meal, akin to those you can get at McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts? Well, soon that particular wish will come true!
Howard Schultz, company CEO, announced on Tuesday that beginning soon, they'll be offering a variety of "breakfast pairings" at "attractive" prices. Starbucks revenues have decreased dramatically in recent months and so they're taking a number of steps in order to stem the tide of these losses, including closing of 300 stores and ceasing to brew decaf after 12 noon.
Speculators say that the decision to introduce these "breakfast pairings" was also motivated by the increased competition from McDonald's, as the hamburger giant has rolled out premium coffee drinks over the last 18 months.
What do you think? Would you be more likely to order a full breakfast from Starbucks if you could just say, "Give me a number one!"?
Last summer, Starbucks announced that they were going to close 616 under-performing stores across 44 states and the District of Columbia. At that time, they attributed the closures to over-expansion and the slowing economy.
Unfortunately, the economy has continued to worsen over the last six months and so Starbucks has determined that they need to close 300 more stores and cut 6,700 additional jobs in order to improve their financial outlook. It breaks out to 6,000 retail and 700 non-store jobs. They haven't yet released the list of locations that they'll be closing, but analysts expect to see the names of those stores in the coming days.
Do you have a Starbucks lover on your holiday shopping list this year? If you do, you're going to want to get yourself over to a Starbucks store sometime in the next couple of days, because they are having a big old sale. Starting Tuesday, December 9th, all merchandise (this means tea, coffee, mugs, coffee makers, gift packs, ornaments and other 'bucks ephemera) will be 20 percent off. The sale runs through Sunday, December 14th.
Sadly, the bargains do not include your morning cup of java, baked goods, gift cards, newspapers, sandwiches or other in-store edibles.
Unsnobbycoffee.com sounds like it might be something really good for your dad or uncle who still can't pronounce "grande" and thinks "frappuccino" is a made-up word (and to be fair, "frappuccino" is a made-up word, by Boston's The Coffee Connection chain which was bought by Starbucks).
Actually, unsnobbycoffee.com is the website for McDonalds' new ad campaign.
"McDonald's has made it simple and easy to get the delicious espresso drinks you crave. No crazy names or sizes. No second language required. So hang out and have some fun."
For more than a year now, Starbucks has been working on improving their breakfast offerings. In spring of 2007, they launched a line of breakfast sandwiches, only to announce a year later that they were pulling them from the stores (they then changed their minds again, announcing that they were only going to retool the sandwiches). Earlier this summer, they started selling a line of whole grain pastries, cups of "perfect oatmeal" and a platter that lives in the refrigerated case that contains a hard boiled egg, a small whole wheat bagel, a few slices of cheese and some fruit.
This morning, they launched the latest addition to the breakfast line-up. Called the Piadini, this savory breakfast pastry comes in two varieties - Portobello Mushroom or Sausage, Egg and Cheddar. Energized by a Starbucks-led breakfast and coffee pairing event I attended last week, I stopped by my local Starbucks today to try out this new breakfast option.
Has anything we eat or drink infiltrated our cultural vernacular as thoroughly as coffee? Maybe coffee can't help itself: just as caffeine enters our bloodstream, perhaps so must coffee itself work its way through our culture. Whatever your position in the dialogue over chain coffee houses versus the local coffee place, here is a cup of hot coffee culture to start your day.
Read about it. If you watch AMC's Mad Men, you just learned that a cup of joe is called that after Joe Martinson, a New York City street coffee vendor who went on to found one of the lynchpin coffee businesses of the early twentieth century. Like most urban legends, there is no definitive proof that we actually got the saying from Joe Martinson, but it's a great story, as is the story of coffee itself. Mark Pendergrast 's Uncommon Grounds: the History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World takes you through the global coffee scene, from the inception of coffee trading through American mass marketing. If you'd rather enjoy a good novel with your latte, then try David Liss' The Coffee Trader or Cleo Coyle's coffeehouse mystery series.
Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter picks up his second restaurant, Monkey Bar. His first, the Waverly Inn, has been luring a high wattage crowd for two years, despite not being officially open.
L.A.'s fast food moratorium raises questions about choice and personal responsibility.
Do you have a Starbucks lover on your holiday shopping list this year? If you do, you're going to want to get yourself over to a Starbucks store sometime in the next couple of days, because they are having a big old sale. Starting Tuesday, December 9th, all merchandise (this means tea, coffee, mugs, coffee makers, gift packs, ornaments and other 'bucks ephemera) will be 20 percent off. The sale runs through Sunday, December 14th. 
Unsnobbycoffee.com sounds like it might be something really good for your dad or uncle who still can't pronounce "grande" and thinks "frappuccino" is a made-up word (and to be fair, "frappuccino" is a made-up word, by Boston's The Coffee Connection chain which was bought by Starbucks). 
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